Sunday, December 17, 2006

I was bumping around the kitchen this morning, a lazy Sunday, while A was sleeping.

Sunday Bloody Sunday, a live version, perhaps from Under a Blood Red Sky popped up.

I loved U2 with the passion of an adolescent: War, Boy, October, Under a Blood Red Sky. It's hard to believe they are the same band that still fills stadia worldwide. They felt like truthtellers passionately connecting us to the Troubles. We were a world at war.

(A remembers trying to make sense of "two groups of white people killing each other." He felt a kinship with the Irish as an oppressed people, until he read about the Draft Riots. Eh, you can't win them all.)

22 years. That's how old Under a Blood Red Sky is. I had it on LP. I was 14 and I had my own stereo. It was one of the first detachable speaker boomboxes (similar to the aiwa we have in the bedroom) and I had the pinnacle record player: digital tracking. A button on the outside enabled you to move the needle to skip tracks. It was way cool.

I played this album over and over and over and over.

I would listen to the songs on repeat, teasing meaning from repeated listenings. It was all very intense and it felt like my own secret.

When I stopped listening to lps in favor of the far superior cassette tape technology, I moved from U2, though they were my first unaccompanied concert -- Tampa Stadium with Kathleen and tens of thousands of our closest friends. They were the worst seats I've ever had for a show.

I haven't followed them on their journey to being arguably one of the best bands ever. I left them behind for altenative, hip-hop, soul, etc. after craptucular Rattle & Hum. Still, it's nice to hear some Under a Blood Red Sky and Unforgettable Fire and remember being a teenager.